About Me

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Even though I’ve been told I shouldn’t do this, or actually in spite of it, I would like to I want to tell you all a fable. This is of my own making and I’ve been thinking about it a great deal. I hope you can see what the moral is and how it applies to all of us.

A single drop of rain floated peacefully in a cloud high above the ground. The raindrop happened to look down and saw a single flower wilting in the dry earth. The raindrop knew that the flower needed water, but it was well aware of the fact that it alone would make no difference in the huge expanse of dry ground. The raindrop thought, “That flower is going to die if someone doesn’t do something. But what difference would I make? I am only a single drop of rain.” So the little raindrop did nothing. It just floated on in its cloud and never even considered what kind of difference it could make if it had just gotten together with all of the other raindrops. The flower died and the world was a little less beautiful because one little raindrop thought he could make no difference.

I really do think that the little raindrop should have looked at this picture before thinking that one raindrop can’t make a difference. This, after all, is the result of single raindrops, countless millions of them, but still individual drops.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

I would like to take a minute here to try to set the record straight. I don’t recall exactly when he said it, but I have heard the President of the United States of America, a man who is supposedly a Constitutional Lawyer by trade, speak against the Bill of Rights. The Anointed One, our Beloved Leader Barrack Hussein Obama (may peace be upon Him) has said that the Bill of Rights is flawed because the rights listed are, in his words, “negative rights.” He says that the Bill of Rights only list things that the government is not allowed to do but don’t say anything about what the government is required to do. He, like most liberals, (OOPS, we aren’t supposed to call them liberals any more, they are Progressives), He doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that the founding fathers wrote the Constitution in such a way as to severely limit the power of the Federal Government. Do they not teach that at Harvard Law School? I’m the son of a cotton farmer from Arkansas and I understand that principle. That is the way this country has been governed since the ratification of the Constitution. And that form of government, or lack thereof, is what has made this country GREAT!

Give me a second here to catch my breath and step down off of my soapbox. Talk amongst yourselves for a minute. Okay. Back to the topic at hand.

I am not an expert on the Constitution, but I can read it and understand it. Our Constitution was not written in some high-handed legalese that only a Philadelphia Lawyer could understand. (Speaking of Philadelphia, Go Phillys, beat them Yankees.) I think that Thomas Jefferson wrote in such plain language for a reason. When the language of a law or constitution or any such document that regulates the way we govern or do business is simple, then nothing can be hidden in the document. Compare our Constitution which you can get in a book small enough to carry around in your shirt pocket of the Senate’s Healthcare Proposal. This new monster bill is more than 2500 pages long. Plus, no one except the lawyers that wrote it could understand anything it says.

But back to the Constitution, while what The Anointed One, our Beloved Leader Barrack Hussein Obama (may peace be upon Him), said about the Bill of Rights is true, it’s not 100% true of the Constitution. Yes, the Bill of Rights tells what the Federal Government can NOT do to you, there is a list of things in the Constitution that the Government is supposed to do.

This list of responsibilities or powers is call “The Enumerated Powers.” They make up Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Article I Section 8 clearly lists the duties of the Federal Government. There are 18 things that Congress is supposed to do. How we’ve gotten to this place where people think that the Government is supposed to take care of them, make sure they have health care, a place to live and food to eat will take someone with much more education than me and much more time to do research. I can tell you this, it didn’t start on January 20, 2009. We have been headed in this direction for decades, not just years and we may never get our full freedom back again. We have given up much of our freedom in exchange for security. That path can only lead to the total destruction of our country, and total loss of our freedom. I don’t know if we can turn this around, but before we can attempt to go back we first have to stop.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

We are all waiting with bated breath to hear what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has to say about the Senate’s Healthcare Overhaul Bill. Reports are still a bit contradictory as to what is in the bill. We know that the Public Option is in the bill. Prince Harry and Princess Pelosi wouldn’t have it any other way. Because, after all, the Anointed One, our Beloved Leader Barack Hussein Obama, may peace be upon him, wills it to be part of the bill. And in Washington, His will shall be done, whether we like it or not. The CBO has the rather daunting task of figuring out just how much this monstrosity will cost the taxpayers’ great grandchildren.

We know that one way the bill will keep costs down is to cut $500 Billion from Medicare Advantage. That is the Medicare program that pays a portion of the patient’s medical costs but allows the patient to buy supplemental insurance to cover the gap between what the government pays and what the doctor charges. Think of it as “Gap Insurance.”

This sounds like it will really hurt senior citizens. It will make them pay more for the healthcare that they will need more and more of as they age. Something that attacks the seniors in this way will surely have a tough time getting this past groups that advocate for senior citizens. They are going to scream bloody murder. But they aren’t. AARP actually supports this onerous new threat to the well being of their members. I couldn’t believe it when I heard this. I thought, it can’t be true, then I did some research.

If you cut a half trillion dollars from Medicare, the doctors will not be getting paid as much for treating seniors. This makes the gap between the doctor’s bill and the government payment. No problem, just buy more “Gap Insurance.” And who sells Gap Insurance? AARP does. Imagine that.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Sometimes the hardest thing about blogging is trying to decide what to write about. It’s not that there isn’t anything to write about, but just the opposite. There is so much going on that it is impossible to concentrate on one issue. I could write for days about what is or isn’t a serious threat to our freedom, but I think it would behoove me to try my best to stick to one topic. For right now, I think I’ll stick to the Healthcare Overhaul.

Today Harry Reid sent the Senate’s version of the Healthcare Bill to the CBO to have it marked up. We won’t be able to view the finished bill until the day before it is voted on. The problem is, it is more than 2500 pages long. I have no problem with the length of the bill. When you are writing in “Legalese” the paper gets pretty long. What bothers me is the fact that the public is not being given enough time to read and evaluate just what is in the bill. What is the big hurry? The bill won’t go into effect until 2013, so why does it have to be voted on this week? We’ve heard it before, “We must act now, tomorrow is too late.” A sieve holds water better than that statement. It is not that the bill MUST be acted upon quickly, it’s that the libs don’t want us to read the bill before they pass it. What do they have to hide? I keep hearing what this bill will contain and what it won’t, but if we are being told the truth, why can’t we read the bill? We do know that the “Public Option” is in the bill, Prince Harry already said so. Reid is totally convinced that a large majority of Americans are in favor of the Public Option. I am not sure just what poll Prince Harry is looking at. The approval rating of the bill is well below 50%.

It seems that the Dems are in denial, they see two million Tea Party Patriots on the mall in Washington DC and they think it is all a put-on. They see people all over the country organizing and standing up for what they believe in and call us Astro Turf. They see the polls that show them losing the war of public opinion and dismiss them as being manipulated by rich Republicans. Well, they are going to get a wake-up call in just a little over a year from now. We are going to get together, we are going to campaign, we are going to raise funds, we are going to work the phones, we are going to send tons of mail and we are going to vote them OUT in ’10!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker on a vehicle that really got me started thinking. The sticker was on the back of a vehicle that belongs to a friend of mine. I’ve probably seen the sticker dozens of times, but yesterday I really noticed it and spent a bit of time thinking it over. It is amazing how much can be said with just nine words. Those few simple words were, “The Second Amendment makes all of the others possible.” Roll that around in your mind for a minute. All that this country is, it owes to the fact that our founding fathers recognized the importance of the government having something to fear from the populace, not the other way around.

That, of course, brings to mind the words of Thomas Jefferson, “When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fear the people there is liberty.” This is as true today as it was way back then. The government should fear the people. Over the course of several years the government seems to have lost its fear of the people. I recently saw a video of Anita Dunn, White House Communications Director, explain how the Obama campaign was able to control the press. It’s very disturbing to hear someone with her level of power talk about how they forced the media to concentrate on the words Obama said rather than things he had done and the kind of people he hung out with. Why would this be disturbing? I will try to explain.

This administration knows that, with the exception of Fox News and talk radio, they control the media. That is exactly why this administration has declared war on Fox News. The libs have been screaming against talk radio for years. If the government is able to control the media, they can slip all manner of unconstitutional acts into innocuous-looking bills and no one will be any the wiser. Until it’s too late. Total control over the media will also ensure that the ruling party will never be voted out of office. They will have a permanent majority and will lord it over any opposition.

What has that got to do with the Second Amendment? It’s simple, an armed populace is a threat to tyranny. If the government reaches too far in its quest for power, sooner or later the people will rise up and overthrow the oppressors. Knowing that there are millions of law abiding citizens out there that own guns makes the government a little queasy about taking more and more freedom from the masses. I think that there is a direct link between how much a government wants power and how much they want to take guns away from citizens. Make no mistake about it, gun registration is just one more step toward seizing those guns. We’ll discuss more about firearm registration in the future. Right now we must fight hard to keep our right to bear arms. All of the rest of our freedoms rest upon it.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

So far most of my posts have been about healthcare reform, more or less, but today I want to bring up a totally different issue. This is something that means a great deal to me. For years now, I have worked hard to make sure that not one of our troops coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan ever feels the way I did when I came home from Vietnam. It is still just as vivid in my mind today as it was in 1973. I was walking through the LA Airport happier than I had been in a year. I was finally back in the continental United States. I had my sea bag on my shoulder and my flight bag in my hand. OK, maybe I was strutting a bit, after all, I was a 19 year old Marine in full uniform looking my best. Ahead of me I saw a group of young kids. I realize that they were all probably older than I was, but hey, they were civilians, I was very mature for my age. Combat will do that to you. Anyway, as I was walking past the group of kids, a girl stepped out from the group, called me a “Baby Killer” and spit on my uniform. She may have been aiming for my face, but it hit my little rack of ribbons and badges. She immediately tried to duck behind one of the guys in the group but he was doing his best to hide behind her. Of course my first impulse was to beat the crap out of all seven of them, but in the back of my mind a little voice was telling me that if I even showed anger, then they would have won. So, I bent down and put my flight bag on the floor and wiped off my uniform, picked up my bag and walked on.

Yes, I did my best to show no emotion at all toward the youngsters, but I can not tell you how much that hurt. I’ve been in therapy now for almost 20 years and I’ve been hospitalized twice. I like to joke about being crazy, but deep down it is no joke. For some reason in the late 60’s and early 70’s the public blamed the troops coming home for the mess that the politicians got us into. I work to make sure that the people of America don’t feel that way toward our troops today. Our armed forces are made up chiefly of young men and women that volunteered to serve their country and risk their own lives to defend our freedom.

I didn’t mean for this post to be a cry for sympathy for either our troops or me. My message today is this: Mr. President, either give the generals on the ground what they need to win this war or bring them home now. I don’t want to appear less of a patriot than I am and have always been. I hope the president takes the first option. Send enough troops and materiel to the Middle East to win this war once and for all. We need to show these terrorist cowards that we mean business and when we do finally leave there won’t be a wholesale slaughter of innocent people. We should destroy the Taliban completely and let the people of Iraq and Afghanistan a chance to set up a fair government for themselves. If we aren’t going to do that, then bring our troops home now. We should not shed one more drop of American blood unless we are committed to building a stable, secure nation in those countries. We have already been at war now for 8 years. That is already too long. Let’s do it right or get the hell out!

To steal a line from Forrest Gump, that’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Well, the Baucus Bill, remember the one they passed out of committee on Friday, has finally been written. Now the Libs, and of course Olympia Snowe, can find out what they voted for. It reminds me of an old Cold War joke, on Election Day in the Soviet Union a party member is given his official ballot and starts to open it. A nearby KGB agent stopped him and asked what he thought he was doing. The member said, “I just wanted to see who I voted for.” The KGB agent said, “You can’t do that, it’s a secret ballot.” Well, the secret is out now, so the Socialists in congress can now go and see what they voted for. Apparently all the flack that the Libs got about their thousand-page bills has struck a cord with them. But as usual they took it to mean just the opposite of what was being said, it is not a thousand-page bill, it is one thousand five hundred pages long. Way to go Libs, you’ve outdone yourselves.

If you want to see if you can decipher the legalese this monstrosity is written in, you can. Just go to this address: www.opencongress.org I’ve already looked at it and read about three sentences. By then I was so confused I thought that I was in favor of it. I do hope that someone can go through this bill and publish just what freedoms we give up with each page like they did with H.R. 3200.

I know, there are those who will cry that I’m an un-American racist rabble Astro-Turf GOP funded lying idiot for mentioning that we will give up some freedom if this bill passes. What those don’t seem to understand is that for every power that we give to the government is a little more of our freedom that we have lost. Remember the words of Thomas Jefferson, “A government big enough to give you all that you want is big enough to take everything that you have.”

I’ll leave you with this thought. The government can not give anything to anyone unless they first take it away from someone else.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

OK, I know I promised to have this up several days ago, but it has been a very hectic week and it has rained every day for two weeks and I just failed to…never mind. I’ll just get busy on it now.

It looks like this healthcare overhaul is about to come down to the wire. This will be a real tragedy for the American people. The alleged Baucus Bill (alleged because it has passed committee, but has not been written yet) is the only one of the five or so bills under consideration that doesn’t include the deadly “Public Option.” However, the bill does NOT prohibit the public option from being imposed at a later date. Of course, that name, public option, is misleading. What it really means is a government option. The federal government is going to start selling insurance. If that ever happens there is no way to prevent the government from eventually taking over healthcare, lock, stock and barrel. Oh sure, they SAY that won’t happen, but if you believe that I’ve got some land in Florida I’d like to sell you.

This debate started out talking about our healthcare system being broke. If you manipulate the statistics in just the right way, America comes in 37th in the world. Trying to understand how the World Health Organization came up with the formula to determine which country ended up in which place almost caused my brain to explode. The fact is, the US has the lowest mortality rate in 13 of the 16 most deadly cancers in the world. Here is a name you may not have ever heard of, Belinda Stronach. Stronach was a liberal member of the Canadian Parliament and a member of the Cabinet. Remember that Canada’s health care system is supposed to be superior to ours. Why then, did Belinda Stronach forego treatment in the wonderful Canadian Healthcare system and have her cancer treatment in California? Maybe she had some family there or something, I don’t know. The fact of the matter is, every year thousands of people come to this country from all over the world seeking medical treatment.

I have long thought that the way to determine a country’s greatness is to compare the number of people who want IN the country to the number of folks that want OUT of it. The number of people that want into this country for medical treatment is much higher than the number of people wanting to go outside the US for treatment. Having said all of that, it seems that the debate has shifted away from the quality of healthcare and has become centered mainly on health insurance. I suppose this should be appropriate since nowhere in the healthcare overhaul bill is anything said about improving the standards for healthcare. It’s all about the availability of healthcare.

I will tackle the issue of healthcare availability in my next posting. I feel that I have some expertise in that area since I worked for over three years in the medical field. Check back tomorrow.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Okay, let me get this straight, the Baucus bill was passed out of committee so it can now go to the Senate floor, but it can't go to the Senate floor until it is melded into another bill that is still in committee. We can't explain what the bill allows or doesn't allow because the bill that was passed in committee has not even been written yet. Also, the bill that hasn't been written yet and the bill that hasn't passed the committee vote will then have to be rewritten to make the two bills one, and of course that bill can't be rewritten until the first bill is written. Once it is written and passed it then has to go to the House to be consolidated with the House bill. At this point I don't know whether the House bill has been written or not, but once it is written it too has to be rewritten to match the latest unwritten bill in the Senate...oh forget it, my head is about to explode if I try to figure this out.

Yes, I'm being a bit sarcastic here, but I'm doing it to point out just how incredibly confusing this has become. You don't have to be a Constitutional Lawyer to see right away that this is not what our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote our Constitution. But then, this administration has routinely shunted the Constitution aside and has passed pretty much anything that Barack Hussien Obama has asked for. Time and time again bills have been published in the wee hours of the morning and then voted on before anyone has had a chance to read them. Am I the only one that sees the irony in the fact that this 1000+ page "bill" completely circumvents the Constitution which is less than ten pages long? We have allowed the inmates to take over the assylum. I hesitate to use the word "Bill" to describe this latest nonsense, it can't be a bill until it is written. Therefore, this committee has voted on a concept, not a reality.

BHO took an oath back in January to preserve and protect the U.S. Constitution, a document that, in his words, is fundamentally flawed. How can you protect and uphold a document that you don't agree with???? Every day I pray that I'm wrong in my interpretation of BHO's real agenda, but every day it seems that my interpretation is closer to being proven right. And what is my interpretation? That will take some time to put into words. I hope I'll have it done and put up here tomorrow.

Monday, October 12, 2009

The House and Senate are, once again, on the brink of voting for the most massive healthcare overhaul in the history of this country, possibly the world. There has been a lot of misinformation, hate-filled speech and name calling associated with this massive overhaul. All you have to do is pick up a major newspaper or turn on the network news and you will hear it. And of course it is directed at those who oppose the overhaul. You’d never know that if you listen to the mainstream media. The liberal media wants you to think that the opposition to the bill is out there beating up peaceful protesters, carrying guns to Town Hall meetings and just being generally destructive.

Soccer moms have been called wild-eyed terrorists and senior citizens have been referred to as a rabble. But most disturbing of all, veterans returning from fighting in one of our two foreign wars have been called potential terrorists. What? People who love their country so much they are willing to risk life and limb to protect her are called unpatriotic. There is just no accounting for this behavior. No decent person disparages another person’s right to stand up for what that person believes.

Let’s take a minute to look at the gentleman that got beaten up for trying to sell signs at a protest rally. It wasn’t a conservative that beat him up, it was an SEIU thug. At a Town Hall rally that I attended in Arkadelphia there was a large contingent of people, They were very loud and often rude. They all had little id stickers on their shirts. Were they members of grass roots organizations that went there to support their side of the debate? NO. They were bussed in from Little Rock to make it look like the majority of people were in favor of the Healthcare overhaul. They failed miserably. Yet Nancy Pelosi called those of us who were protesting against the bill “Astroturf.” Meaning we were the artificial grassroots organizations. The thing that leaves me talking to myself sometimes is the fact that when the libs cry foul, it’s in response to the allegation that conservatives are doing just what the libs actually are doing.

You can tell that the conservatives and libs come from totally different worlds. If you want to see just how different the people that make up the opposing sides are, just compare these two pictures of the National Mall.

This is a picture of the National Mall taken on January 21, 2009, the day after almost two million people descended on the Mall to see the inauguration of Barack Obama. Of course there is no grass, it’s winter in DC, but it cost the taxpayers literally millions of dollars to clean up the mess the libs left.

This is a picture of the National Mall taken on September 13, 2009, the day after 1.2 million people marched on the mall for the 9/12 Tea Party. Of course there is grass, but where is the debris? This just shows that a million conservatives are just more respectful of our nation’s capitol than a million libs.

While you didn’t see the first picture on the mainstream media, there is no doubt in my mind that if the 9/12 Tea Party had left one third the mess that the people that turned out to see the inauguration did it would have dominated the press for days.

The far-left libs have no new ideas for America. All they can do is mock the efforts of those who want this country to prosper. They will attack us and then accuse us of personally attacking them. That’s okay. Let them ignore us. But someone might want to remind them, King George didn’t listen to us either.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

In February 2008 a group of like-minded individuals began to meet at a small lunch café in downtown El Dorado, Arkansas. They came up with the perfect name for this group, Conservative Action Project. Why is it such a perfect name? First of all, all of the members are politically conservative. Second, the aim is for action, not just sitting around grousing about what is going on in our government. Round that out with the fact that this is an ongoing project and you realize that the name tells just what this organization is all about.

I read about this organization in the El Dorado News Times. A letter to the editor by one of the founding members, Ed Schimberg got my attention. As I read through the letter I knew that this was something that I’d been looking for. For most of my adult life I have been interested in politics but never enough to become actively involved in the process myself. However, as things began to unfold in Washington, DC I became more and more concerned. It seemed as if this country which I love more than life itself was in jeopardy of crumbling under the pressure of socialism. I wanted to do something but had no idea where to start. After I read Ed’s letter to the editor, I looked his name up in the phone book and called him. Ed invited me to come to the next meeting and shortly after I got there I realized that here was something that I could do.

Shortly after I started attending CAP meetings I heard about the plans for the Tax Day Tea Party. I brought the idea up at the next meeting and the members received it very well. We went right to work. On April 15th we drew a very nice crowd to the steps of the Union County Courthouse. Since then we have held two more Tea Party events, we’ve gotten together a convoy of 12 vehicles and 25 people to caravan up to Arkedelphia to attend the only public Town Hall meeting that Mark Ross held in this area during the August recess. We have also had several petition drives and smaller demonstrations and a booth at the Union County Fair. I have also helped to organize another group, sort of a branch of CAP, CAP Ouachita County.

I hope that we can continue to grow and make an impact on how things run in Arkansas, Union County and the U.S.A. We have helped to slow down things a bit and even threaten the passage of the health care reform bills. Today I’m starting this blog in an attempt to extend the reach and scope of CAP. If you would like to know more about CAP and what we are doing next, keep an eye on this blog, or if you’d rather, feel free to contact me at: john_baby@yahoo.com or call me at (870) 814-7528. If you would like to be on our e-mail list, send an e-mail requesting so to: conservativeactionproject@yahoo.com.

May God be with you all and I pray for his guidance as I lead this organization in the way that most honors Him.